There was an article in USA Today on June 7, 2017 entitled “Can Porn Be Feminist?” It was written by Patrick Ryan. I will share a little of the article with you and make some comments. The reason I am going to do that is this is not some sidetrack. Some obscure kind of a problem that we are facing. No. This is a pandemic problem in the culture and the church. For example, “last year,” according to the article, “women accounted for 26% of all traffic worldwide” for a particular very popular pornographic site. The idea is that porn is for men but increasingly it is ruining anthropology in general.

The article goes on to say that “Porn made with feminist values ‘is about showing an authentic representation of human sexuality,’” and “Oh no,” says the author, it turns out that “women like sex just as dirty, kinky and exciting as men do.” Lane Moore, Cosmopolitan’s former sex and relationships editor, says that “There’s a huge market for (feminist porn).” I am going to get that cashed out for you in just a second. Feminist porn means porn according to feminist standards. She says, “I have friends who run a lot of sites…and have a huge audience.”

“According to a survey of 24,000 women,” a pretty big survey, “18% say they watch porn daily.” Then catch this statistic, “63% watch weekly or a few times a month. Eighty-nine percent say they watch it without their partners, while 34% say they tend to select videos featuring participants they can relate to.” Moreover, “TV comedies…are created by women, and feature empowered female characters casually discussing — or in the act of — masturbation and watching porn.”

Bottom line, according to the article, here is the take away, “people are trying to normalize (watching porn)” and then three chilling words, “as they should.”

But, they should not. In reading the Benedict Option, this is one of the subjects Rod Dreher touches on. He points out that the moral and spiritual damage from porn is obvious. Porn dehumanizes. It destroys the image of God in the faces of its performers. It turns and it trains users to see others as depersonalized objects for sexual pleasure. It destroys the connection between sex and love. Lot of bad news.

What is news, however, is that neuro scientists have discovered that pornography use has devastating effects on the brain. Watching porn floods the brain’s pleasure centers with dopamine, and the more one uses porn, the more one has to use it, and the more extreme versions of it. Why? You got to get more and more extreme to get the same dopamine effect. Pornography literally rewires the brain making it very difficult for long time users to be aroused by actual human beings.